Best mind-blowing book on spirituality you have ever read

[lokariototal]

What is the best book on spirituality you have read? Perhaps a book that changed your life?

[Desolation]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. :wink5:

[Lokasenna]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. :wink5:

Agreed.

[Katy North]

As a teenager, Jonathon Livingston Seagull inspired me to do what I wanted to do, instead of what other people told me to do.

[mal4mac]

Hamlet

[LeavesOfGrass]

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. This is a must-read, non-fiction.

[The Comedian]

A bunch for me -- the top of the list is Walden, which has influenced me more than any other book. Another one is the complete poems of Robert Lowell; I know he's not the greatest poet or anything, but his poems always strike a spiritual chord with me.

[Virgil]

A bunch for me -- the top of the list is Walden, which has influenced me more than any other book. Another one is the complete poems of Robert Lowell; I know he's not the greatest poet or anything, but his poems always strike a spiritual chord with me.

Robert Lowell is one of the major American poets of the late 20th century. He may not be "the greatest poet" but he's very significant, and possibly the most important American poet since Wallace Stevens.

[JuniperWoolf]

For me, it's Swamp Thing. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not.


A bunch for me -- the top of the list is Walden, which has influenced me more than any other book. Another one is the complete poems of Robert Lowell; I know he's not the greatest poet or anything, but his poems always strike a spiritual chord with me.

I KNOW I would love Walden. I'll read that one next.

[stlukesguild]

William Blake's poetry. The poetry and prose of Thomas Traherne. Also Rilke.

[DanielBenoit]

Most recently, Rumi. He is one of the greatest mystic poets I have ever read, comparable to even great religious scripture.

[marcolfo]

The Brothers Karamazov

CHAPTER IX

The devil. Ivan´s Nightmare

"You'll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life! 'There are new men,' you decided last spring, when you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work. It's that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied God -- and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass -- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave'... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!"


Need I say more.....

[JBI]

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies.

[Kevets]

Alan Watts' The Book.

[blazeofglory]

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

[The Comedian]

For me, it's Swamp Thing. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not. . . .I KNOW I would love Walden. I'll read that one next.

If you read Walden, I'd love to chat about it.

[Paulclem]

The Way of the White Clouds

by Lama Anagorika Govinda


The Brothers Karamazov

CHAPTER IX

The devil. Ivan´s Nightmare

"You'll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life! 'There are new men,' you decided last spring, when you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work. It's that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied God -- and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass -- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave'... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!"


Need I say more.....

It reminds me of The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.

[blazeofglory]

The Brothers Karamazov is unbeatable in spiritual ideas

[Silas Thorne]

Krishnamurti - anything that he said really. Oh, and 'The Prophet'

[IceM]

I thought Mere Christianity was actually really good. I'm suprised nobody else has mentioned it.

Then again, I'm not half as well-read as most of you...so I could understand it.

[Silverblue]

mmh, maybe "siddartha" by Hesse or "the fountainhead" by Rand.

[blp]

The I-Ching, Richard Willhelm edition.

Also, when I was nineteen or so, a friend was thinking of joining a religious community and I somehow used the Grand Inquisitor passage from The Brothers Karamazov to talk him out of it. So I guess you could say that book changed his life. Years later this community, though affiliated to the Anglican Church, was revealed to be a sort of cult in which abuses of various sorts had taken place. Thanks, Dostoevsky!